Conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) are a sub-class of porous materials, related to structures such as zeolite

Zeolite

Zeolites are microporous, aluminosilicate minerals commonly used as commercial adsorbents. The term zeolite was originally coined in 1756 by Swedish mineralogist Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, who observed that upon rapidly heating the material stilbite, it produced large amounts of steam from water that...

s, metal-organic framework

Metal-organic framework

Metal-Organic Frameworks are crystalline compounds consisting of metal ions or clusters coordinated to often rigid organic molecules to form one-, two-, or three-dimensional structures that can be porous. In some cases, the pores are stable to elimination of the guest molecules and can be used for...

s, and covalent organic frameworks, but amorphous in nature, rather than crystalline. CMPs are also related to conductive polymers because these porous networks can exhibit extended conjugation

Conjugated system

In chemistry, a conjugated system is a system of connected p-orbitals with delocalized electrons in compounds with alternating single and multiple bonds, which in general may lower the overall energy of the molecule and increase stability. Lone pairs, radicals or carbenium ions may be part of the...

.

Uses

Initial studies on these porous materials related mostly to gas sorption

Sorption

Sorption refers to the action of absorption* Absorption is the incorporation of a substance in one state into another of a different state ....

, but more recent work has focused on their potential in terms of catalysis

Catalysis

Catalysis is the change in rate of a chemical reaction due to the participation of a substance called a catalyst. Unlike other reagents that participate in the chemical reaction, a catalyst is not consumed by the reaction itself. A catalyst may participate in multiple chemical transformations....

, for example in the form of 'metal-organic CMPs', and also for light harvesting, taking advantage of their highly conjugated nature. Surface area

Surface area

Surface area is the measure of how much exposed area a solid object has, expressed in square units. Mathematical description of the surface area is considerably more involved than the definition of arc length of a curve. For polyhedra the surface area is the sum of the areas of its faces...

s in CMPs can exceed 1000 m²/g in many cases, although related porous aromatic frameworks, which lack extended conjugation, can have much higher surface areas of more than 5500 m²/g. A further advantage claimed for CMP materials is the ability to derivatize them with a wide range of functional groups.